When asked who drives and shapes corporate culture, the CEO comes to mind.

And yet, think about the hundreds or thousands of your employees who will never meet or personally interact with your CEO. Who shapes culture for them?

It’s your managers. For other employees, it’s the front-line and middle managers who embody company culture.

Research from Staffbase and USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism confirms the vital role supervisors play as the primary source of company information. They “decode” the messages coming down from the top, translate policy into actionable direction and even become gatekeepers, deciding what information to pass along and what to hold back.

Considering that these managers are also responsible for 70% of the fluctuation in employee engagement levels, their effectiveness directly translates to your organization’s success. In fact, 82% of employees would consider quitting because of a bad manager, according to a GoodHire survey.

Your middle managers are also your pipeline of future leaders. So, if they don’t measure up, you have problems — today and tomorrow.

While managers have the most direct influence on team performance, culture, and engagement, organizations often struggle with developing these leaders. For years, executive coaching has been reserved for the chosen few while managers are sent to full-day workshops or given online training. But is this the wrong approach? Today’s adult learners need to be coached to put what they learn into action. Business doesn’t improve when people know more; it improves when people perform better.

So even though online learning is an affordable way to develop frontline and middle managers, it typically falls short of bringing about lasting behavior change. Conversely, by strategically adding coaching and blending learning modalities, organizations can build a frontline leadership dream team – and a robust talent pipeline for the future.

The Current Landscape: Leadership Training Concerns Remain

It’s difficult for organizations to “crack the code” of leader development. A McKinsey survey found that only 11% of executives strongly agreed their current leadership development efforts achieved the desired results. Unfortunately, many managers agree. Research by Gallup found that only 48% of managers believe they have the necessary skills to excel at work.

In late 2023 through July 2024, IMPACT Group surveyed more than 175 chief human resources officers (CHROs) and learning and development (L&D) leaders across 12 industries and found a similar theme: many organizations are concerned about their lack of well-trained leaders. Key pain points for survey respondents include:

• Too few leaders ready for the next level.
• Talent retention among rising leaders.
• Lack of management competencies to effectively lead organizational change.
• Lack of diversity among leaders.
• Business and legal risk associated with inadequately trained people managers.
• Inability to scale management training to more leaders in the organization.
• Low return on investment (ROI) from online learning for leadership development.

While specific areas of concern may be more profound in some organizations than others, their impact on organizational success and growth is undeniable. Poor leadership and ineffective training modalities can lead to several undesirable talent management outcomes, including high turnover, low engagement, and employee burnout. However, with the right leadership development solutions, organizations can break free from these challenges and cultivate the next generation of senior leaders.

Effective Strategies for Closing the Leadership Skills Gap

To build leadership capability at all levels of the organization and ensure leaders at all levels are ready to take on increasingly larger leadership roles, it’s time to consider a new approach.

The following strategies can help organizations develop more capable leaders and create sustainable behavior change:

1. Scalable leadership development for all levels.

Reserving leadership development for only executives quickly creates an imbalance in leadership capabilities. As executive leaders become stronger, poorly trained managers at other levels may engage in behaviors that negatively impact team productivity and engagement. Moreover, when executive leaders leave the organization, qualified backups are harder to find. Instead of building strong leaders from within, the organization may be forced to backfill leaders from the outside — or worse, leave open leadership roles unfilled.

Given these risks, it’s essential to scale leadership development from the senior team to the newest and least experienced managers. Thankfully, most organizations are eager to accomplish this goal. In IMPACT Group’s survey, 76% of respondents said they wanted to scale leadership development to include newer and rising leaders.

Similarly, Harvard Business School’s 2024 Global Leadership Development Study found that scalability topped the list of desired attributes for leadership development programs, according to feedback from over 1,000 L&D and HR leaders. Many recognize that as leadership development reaches more people managers, the following benefits are possible:

• Enhanced leadership skills across a broader swath of the organization.
• More empowered managers.
• A stronger reputation as an employer committed to career development.
• Improved retention among employees and managers.
• Less risk of legal fines and adverse judgements.

These benefits are why nearly 43% of L&D leaders say they are already offering coaching in some way to non-executive leaders, according to an IMPACT Group study.

2. Flexible online learning.

Online learning solutions are more scalable across leadership levels, as they’re typically more affordable and easier to implement than individualized coaching and other learning modalities. Additionally, online training sessions align well with busy managers’ schedules and can be started and stopped based on a manager’s desired pacing.

Thanks to in-platform reporting, L&D teams can easily track employee progress and course completion. Given all these advantages, it’s not surprising that so many organizations rely on online learning. According to LinkedIn Learning research, 68% of organizations with successful career development programs utilize some form of online learning.

However, some organizations have found that online learning alone can be an insufficient solution; it can run on “auto pilot” while the learner focuses on other work or simply fails to connect with the material. A manager could theoretically complete an entire online training course without committing to any kind of mindset or behavior change.

Even after offering a diverse selection of online training courses, the organization may still be left wondering why leadership gaps persist. For these reasons, it’s beneficial to pair online learning with other forms of leadership development.

3. Blended approach combining online learning with coaching.

Organizations don’t have to be constrained by the limitations of online learning or executive coaching. Instead, they can blend these two learning modalities to create an affordable and scalable development solution for leaders at all levels. With a combination of online content and microcoaching (short, 30-minute coaching sessions), organizations can pair the ease and scalability of online learning with the behavior transformation that comes from individual coaching.

Survey responses show that the majority of organizations have either already adopted a hybrid online learning-coaching solution or plan to implement one.

• Nearly 33% of survey respondents said they offered their non-executive leaders online learning and individual coaching via video conference.
• About 33% said they were likely to add online learning and individual coaching.
• Additionally, 89% agreed or strongly agreed that online learners would be more likely to put new skills to use if they were also working with a coach who encouraged behavior change.

In addition to improving leadership skills development among managers, the blend of coaching and online learning delivers:

• Affordability: Microcoaching programs combined with online learning can offer the leadership development organizations need at a price point that’s scalable for early career leaders.
• A compact training window: Rather than months-long or full-day time commitments, short microcoaching sessions over eight weeks combined with online learning are manageable for busy leaders. This condensed timeframe can make a world of difference. One survey respondent remarked, “Leadership coaching has been and continues to be a struggle for us in our industry. Turnover is so high that it feels like we don’t get adequate time to coach and train before the leader hits a wall of difficulty and resigns.”
• Alignment with existing online learning programs: Scalable microcoaching solutions can integrate with learning platforms managers may already use, such as LinkedIn Learning®—the most popular online learning platform for the organizations we surveyed.
• Specific focus: This approach is not one-size-fits-all. Each learner should consume the online content best suited for their personal development.  Survey respondents ranked these competencies in the order most critical for development:

1. Managing difficult conversations
2. Leading change
3. Going from individual contributor to people leader
4. Creating a team culture of accountability
5. Leading with emotional intelligence
6. Managing conflict
7. Delegating effectively

An Innovative Solution for Leadership Training and Succession

Based on the findings of IMPACT Group’s 2024 survey, it’s clear many organizations recognize the value of combining online learning and coaching for leadership development. It offers a clear path to developing those leaders with the most direct impact on employees and teams—frontline and middle managers.

While coaching and online learning may work well as standalone solutions in some situations, combining the two can help develop critical leadership skills in managers at a lower price point and with greater long-term behavior change. As a result, leaders throughout the organization will be better prepared to take on larger roles and fill critical gaps in the leadership pipeline.